Lies Like Love (27 page)

Everything took a long time. Getting my shoes on, finding a jacket, keys. Slow was no good, and I slammed doors, vicious, angry.
What happened to you, Audrey?
But I couldn’t answer the question and pressed it down, stamping it underfoot like a crawling spider.

There was no one around. Too early for Peter to be home. Too early for Mum. What I needed was someone to talk to. But not someone I knew. No one who would ask questions. I couldn’t take horror. Sympathy. Blame.

The garden was budding into life. It was early summer out here, the grass neon bright, the sky sun blue and the clouds building a candy-floss staircase too delicate to tread. Willows reached with long graceful arms, dandling long-forgotten children, their whispers a story of the past. I couldn’t stay in the Grange forever, shut up in the attic like the woman in the book I used to read. But the sky loomed too large; it spread and swung. There was too much of it all, too much air and space and sky, and underneath my feet the ground was screaming and the sky was hurting and the bones of the world were about to break. I stumbled. Leo had promised adventures and the thought of that made me turn from the green because nettles grew among it all, long and cruel. Like my mother. If you touched them, they’d leave a stain, a sting, but it was their
long hard yellow roots that were the problem, like a live wire running under the earth, under my skin. Connecting, tying a trap.

Peter is well
, I reminded myself,
your brother is alive, healthy, growing
. That was all I’d wanted when I’d returned. But I hadn’t seen the future – that I’d lose myself like this. That hadn’t been part of the plan. I thought it’d be like before: bad, but not so bad that I couldn’t see better times ahead and plot a way out, a path upwards. And now the future was so dark, as if all the blinds had been pulled down, shutting me up, closing down my life.

I couldn’t go far or fast. My legs hurt. Ankles, knees, thigh bones like twigs, muscles like sponge. And a brain like a nest of maggots, rotten and wrong. I walked. Where to? Dr Caldwell had wanted to know what was wrong. Dr Caldwell had asked me to tell her. She would understand. I could go there now. I could. She would listen. I had the words. I knew what to say.

Tell Doctor Caldwell.

Now and then a car roared past. I flattened myself into the hedge each time. And then one slowed, driving close. The Thing was at the wheel.

‘Get in, Audrey,’ it said, leering from the window. ‘Get in this car.’

I kept my eyes down, on the road, and tried to squeeze past. If I wasn’t careful, the wheel would run over my foot. I could feel it happen somewhere in the future, a blinding pain, a crushing agony. Flesh breaking, bones snapping.

‘Get in,’ it said. ‘We’re going home.’

Mum and I went everywhere together after that. Another day, another week, another month. The sun was out but we were on our way to the clinic when Mum pulled over at the newsagents in town to get another pack of cigarettes. She was smoking a lot, coughing at night, and I kept my window wound down and rested my head on my hand, staring out, waiting for her to come back. Across the road people walked in and out of the supermarket, trolleys rattled on wonky wheels. The sounds of that and the traffic jangled and blurred.

‘Hey.’

I must have been half asleep because the voice made me jump. Leo’s voice.

No time to fix the window, no time to hide. I’d been spotted and it was a shock. In my imagination, Leo had drifted and changed: a ghost, insubstantial – like me. He belonged to another existence, a different girl. Not this strange being I had become. And now Leo was here, right in front of me, it was strange to see how solid he was. How tall. Alive. I took off my glasses. Rubbed my eyes. Nothing was clear. The lives other people, my friends, were leading without me. I was used to pills, my psychiatrist. The antiseptic white of hospital waiting rooms. The bright pretend fun of the clinic. The rotting walls of the Grange. Not this.

I realized Leo was staring at me. He was waiting for something. Time opened, stretching in shock.

‘Audrey. What happened?’ Leo, my Leo – because that is what he always was and would be in my heart – leant forward, resting his hands on the door, his head close. So close, I could smell him. I shut my eyes and breathed him in, and I know I smiled for a second. Sun, fresh grass, paper. He’d been reading somewhere; under a tree, I guessed. The imprint of blades of grass on his arm. Nature’s tattoo. Ink on his fingers, I smelled that too, the rich, thick scent – a better sort of blood. I could touch him easily; his arms were near my face and the warm afternoon rose from his skin, curling towards me. I could have buried my face in his T-shirt; I could have held his strong, warm hand. Once upon a time.

‘You look – I mean, you look bad.’ His voice was low.
Disgust
, I thought, wishing I could cover my head, my face. But it was too late to put anything pretty there. Moving back, trying to hide where there was nowhere to hide. The day revealed everything.

‘Thanks.’ I tried to make it a joke. Laugh it off.

Leo bent closer. I breathed him in, as if I could steal some of what he had. Youth. Courage. Beauty. He looked as if he were going to say something, his mouth forming shapes, words on the tip of his tongue. And then Sue appeared beside him, the grin on her face falling, like the sun crashing out of the sky.

‘Audrey?’

‘Hi,’ I managed. They should just go away, stop staring.

‘I didn’t realize –’ she began, and then I interrupted.

‘Please. Please don’t. I’m all right.’ My smile was plastic, a mask, but Sue smiled back, reaching forward into the car, as if to hug me. But here was Mum and there wasn’t time. Sue straightened up and looked at her. Leo too.

‘Mrs Morgan.’ A curt nod of Leo’s head, his eyes darting poison.

‘Hello, Sue,’ Mum said, as if she’d not heard or even seen Leo. ‘All right, are you?’ She rooted in her bag for her keys. I leant over and opened the door for her, my fingers fumbling with the catch.

‘I’m fine, Lorraine, but how about you? You didn’t say it was, I mean, we didn’t realize …’

Sue’s words rose, then trailed off as Mum bowled into the car, turning her key and making the ignition scream. She muttered under her breath, jammed the car into gear and stamped on the accelerator. As we drove away I looked in the wing mirror at Leo and his aunt. They watched the car until we turned a corner and I couldn’t see him any more; then where did they go? It wasn’t my business.

‘What the fuck was that?’ Leo said, as Sue hurried away, turning to walk back to the car.

‘I don’t know, Leo. We always knew she was unwell, unstable …’ His aunt’s voice trailed into nothing and they rode the rest of the way home in silence. It was worse now; worse than ever before, Leo could see that. He’d almost not recognized Audrey; she seemed to have shrunk, her bones protruding through her skin, her veins a stark blue against the white of her neck, her forehead. And her hair? Where had her hair gone?

‘Sue,’ he said, as they pulled into the drive, ‘I can’t stand this.’ He thought he might choke on the words; he wanted to hit something and slammed his fist on the door. ‘It’s my fault, Sue. I shouldn’t have let her go back. We should have done something.’ Jen’s words, Lizzy’s. He hadn’t listened. Not hard enough.

‘What?’ Sue looked at him, uncomprehending; reached out and held his arm. ‘You can’t blame yourself, Leo. This was something we all saw coming, I suppose. Audrey was never right, was she?’

Leo was furious. That his aunt could be so blind convinced him that no one would ever understand Audrey or bother to try to help. He should try to help. He was the only one who could.

‘She was – she
was
right; she was fine. Lovely, you said so yourself.’

‘Well, I mean, not right mentally.’ Sue was struggling to find the right words but he didn’t care.

‘Bullshit. There was nothing wrong with her. Just this thing with Lorraine. I never liked her. I never did. And now – look what’s happened! I have to do something.’

‘You can’t blame Lorraine,’ Sue repeated. ‘Come on, I know the woman’s a bit odd, but seriously, Leo, I know it’s very sad, but she’s done her best by Audrey. And I don’t see what you can do about it. I’m sure Lorraine’s getting her help. And that’s what Audrey needs. Professional help. We were in no position to offer her that.’

‘No. I don’t agree.’ Leo jumped out of the car and ran inside the farmhouse. It was time to try and make some sense of this, but he had no idea how. He could go and see Dr Caldwell, he supposed, or maybe try and find out something about Lorraine, because that was where the problem lay; he knew it.

Google brought up few results. He scanned the references to Lorraine Morgan, then typed in Audrey’s name too. Clicked on a link, a blog.

THE PAIN PLACES: ME AND MY DEPRESSION

BY AUDREY MORGAN, AGED SIXTEEN

AND NINE MONTHS

Where would I be without Mum? I ask myself that question one hundred times a day when I’m lying, so tired, and she’s sitting beside me, reading aloud, or just knitting, just being there.
I want to tell her here how sorry I am for being this way. Mum, I love you, and thank you for everything.

She’s fought every battle for me. She’s the one who’s got me treatment, found me my amazing doctors and never given up. Without her I think I’d be dead. I know I would be. Remember New Year? Remember that? What I did and how sick I got?

Leo stared at photographs, read posts, rubbed his eyes, read again; Audrey couldn’t have written this stuff, about cutting, about depression, about suicidal thoughts. About Lorraine. It wasn’t his Audrey.

He stood up and picked up the phone; he could call her and ask her to tell him exactly what this meant. He held the phone and sat down and read again, scrolling back to the most recent post.

I’m so afraid now of what I might do, of who I might hurt, including myself. Because I’m angry and afraid and trapped in my head with the fear and the voice that tells me I’m no good.

And my depression lies on me. It’s a heavy blanket, piles of heavy blankets, suffocating, so thick that I can’t breathe sometimes, I can’t move. Mum says I’ll get better, that lots of people feel this way. She tells me the sun’s shining outside, but knowing that doesn’t make it go away. Living with an illness like this makes you different and most people just don’t want to know, they don’t want to understand. When Mum takes me out I see the way the people in this town look at me. They step back, as if I stink, as if I’m nasty. They think I might hurt them, do something disgusting, maybe piss myself like a baby or swear
and shout and say all the things they can’t admit. Like life is shit. Like living hurts. It does. Just look at my scars.

Embedded into the text was a photograph of her wrists taken in black and white – almost artistic, the arms naked and thin, far too thin. Her hands held out in what to Leo looked like supplication, empty palms upturned, and the flesh ridged and patterned, criss-crossed with the proof of her pain. He slammed the laptop shut and lay on his bed and cried.

Mum stopped at the supermarket on the way home; I was in the wheelchair. It was cold near the chiller cabinets and I started to shiver and when I started I couldn’t stop.

‘What’s up?’ Mum was filling the basket with treats. I blanked Leo from the day; it hadn’t happened. I hadn’t seen him.

‘Let’s get Pete from school,’ she said, ‘and go home and have a picnic in the garden. The weather’s perfect for it, but you’d better put a sun hat on.’ She examined a bottle of sparkling wine, then put it down, picked up another.

‘Can we go to the sea?’ I asked, the idea striking like a little bit of blue sky. Peter would love it. It would be warm enough for him to swim and I could take a blanket, wrap up if I got cold. It was one of the things I’d promised him, one of the things we’d planned to do. This way I could at least pretend. It didn’t look as if we’d get to Spain. Not this year.

‘Well, I don’t see why not. I fancy getting a bit of a sun. Good idea.’ She made her decision, shoved a couple more things into the basket and wheeled me to the checkout, her shoes squeaking across the tiled floor.

The lady on the till kept looking at me, but I dropped my head and closed my eyes.

‘She’s tired,’ I heard Mum say, ‘been a big day. We just
heard –’ she lowered her voice – ‘it’s terminal. Cancer.’ I didn’t even flinch.

‘Oh. Oh, my God,’ the girl said, sounding as if someone had just told her that she herself was dying, ‘you poor thing.’

‘I know. It’s all right. We’re managing. She’s so brave; she wants to take her brother on a picnic to the seaside after school. It’s amazing really. She’s my inspiration. My miracle.’

I thought Mum was going to cry. The girl on the till too. The whole fucking queue waiting behind us. Once I could have stood up and walked away. Not now. Too late. I wouldn’t get away. Mum wasn’t lying any more. It had all come true. I looked up.

‘Please,’ I said, ‘can we go?’ And Mum gathered her bags, hung them on the handles of the chair and pushed me out into the bright, which hurt, burned my brain like radioactive poison.

‘Here we go, love,’ she said, lifting me into the car. ‘You’re a star, Aud, you know that?’

‘Thanks, Mum,’ I told her, muffling my voice in my hands, wiping at my face, my eyes. She didn’t notice I was crying, or if she did she didn’t care. I tried to remember the last time she’d asked me how I was and realized it was never.

She was still talking. I hadn’t been paying attention.

‘But, Audrey, sweetheart, I thought you wanted to plan – I mean, we’ve been here before, a thousand times, and there’s got to come a point where you face up to it. I mean, I’ve got mine all sorted, have done for years.’

The funeral. Again.

‘
Rhubarbrhubarbrhubarblalalalala
,’ I sang, my hands over my ears.

She darted me a cross look, swatted at my hands, carried on talking over the sound of the radio and the gobbledygook I was spilling like it was Shakespeare.

‘I don’t mean to be harsh, love, but it’s the same for all of us. You never know when your time’s up, and for you, Aud, that day’s closer than for most. I mean, you’re lucky, we all know that, like a cat with nine lives or something.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘But still, you’re a very poorly teen. I mean, who knows what’ll happen now? Mental illness is a serious condition. And you’re not doing well.’ Her eyes were fixed on the road ahead and she ignored the traffic queuing at the junction, spinning out to overtake them all, wheeling us on to the road that ran out of town and towards the school.

We stopped at home for things we needed, then collected Peter from outside the school gates. He punched the air with excitement when I told him our plan. But once we hit the route towards the coast, the roads were jammed with traffic: camper vans and caravans slowed everyone down, queuing for the weekend and blocking the twisty country lanes.

‘For fuck’s sake,’ Mum muttered, shifting in her seat, adjusting her seatbelt for the millionth time. There were damp patches under her arms, staining her top, sweat on her upper lip. I knew she was hot. She didn’t see I was cold.

‘Mum!’ Peter held out his hand. She was supposed to give him a quid every time she used the F word, but she batted his outstretched palm away.

‘We’re turning round.’ She flicked on the indicator.

‘No!’ he wailed. ‘We’ll be there soon. Please, Mum! Look, the traffic’s moving again. Please.’

She sighed and faced forward again. ‘I’ll give it five more minutes. Get a CD on would you, Aud?’ She lit a cigarette, her arm resting on the window.

I rummaged in the glove box, trying to find something different, but the selection was the same. We knew the words to these songs too well. I wanted a better song to sing.

‘Here –’ Pete leant forward again – ‘this.’

‘What is it?’

‘A friend gave it me.’ He nudged my arm. ‘So put it on, Aud. Go on.’

I took the plastic case and opened the box. There was nothing written on the disc. I turned to look at Peter, but his face was the usual picture of innocence. A glimmer of mischief in his eye gave him away, and if I’d still had eyebrows I’d have raised them. What was he up to?

The cars began to move and I slotted the disc into the player, dreading what was going to come out. ‘Crazy Frog’ or whatever it was called. Something daft, anyway.

Mum shifted into second, and the first chord sounded. The breath left my body and it didn’t matter any more about the hot car, the stink of the cigarette smoke, the flies dead and black on the windscreen; my breath caught somewhere in my chest. Just the sound of excitement, of dancing, of John Lennon screaming at me to twist and shout, as he had long ago, when Leo had held me and we’d competed to see who could raise the roof.

Ignoring the look on Mum’s face, I turned up the music, filling the car with the rising chorus, blasting it out into the countryside, singing along in my head, my lips mouthing words that meant more than anyone knew. And it came over me that I was still alive and Leo was right there with me, sharing a pillow in Sue’s spare room – a room that had been mine for a while – an earbud apiece, his fingers drumming the rhythm on my skin.

The song faded, I sat back, happy, waiting for what would come next. It was classical. Mum reached out to switch it off but I batted her hand away. Mozart. I saw him at his piano, in his jeans and bare feet, utterly engrossed in the music until he turned to me and smiled.
Classical music’s the new rock and roll
, he’d said, teasing. And I’d got up and sat beside him and put my head on his shoulder, not really caring about rock and roll or anything, just Leo, who made me feel peaceful and good. I wanted to get out of the car. Run all those miles back to the farm. Because Leo still cared, he still thought about me, and this was the proof.

‘Where’d you get this, Peter?’ I heard Mum saying, somewhere distant, as the violins swooped and soothed. But she must have liked it too, because she shut up and we sat there, all of us, suspended in the music, silly smiles on our faces.

I turned and looked at Peter; reached back and put my hand up to his cheek, touched his soft skin and he grabbed my fingers, squeezed tight.

‘Thanks, mate,’ I said.

‘Love you, Aud,’ he whispered, so only I could hear.

The sun sank like we’d switched time to slow motion and Peter ran in and out of the water, dipping his toes into the waves. I borrowed Mum’s phone and snapped him splashing in the shallows, his skinny white body forging a path forward before he half dived, disappearing for a second, then coming up, spluttering for air, already blue with cold. The camera clicked and buzzed. I turned and caught Mum in my sights, staring out over the sea.

‘Hey,’ she called, ‘come here, Aud. Get one of the two of us.’ I couldn’t resist her smile. The invitation. Like we were normal, like she loved me, as if this was something we’d do any day. As if we’d print this picture and put it in an album to look at years later, remembering good times. Happiness.

I sat by her on the blanket we’d brought from home, positioned the camera, posed and snapped away.

‘That’s it – let’s see.’ We looked back through the pictures together. We were nothing alike, not really, but there was something in our eyes, magnified by the lens. I zoomed in, looking harder. And then I saw it. The fear. The Thing. Not just in Mum, but in me too: I was killing me too. But I didn’t have to go on with this. I didn’t have to die.

‘Gorgeous,’ Mum said, kissing my cheek, her arm tight round me, holding me close to her. ‘Fancy an ice cream?’

When I nodded she got up and wandered back up the beach to the row of cafes across the way. Peter came running up from the sea, shaking water from himself as if he were a little puppy, his skin prickling with goosebumps. I passed him the towel.

‘Quick, get dry – you’ll freeze.’

‘I know, it really is freezing in there, Aud.’ His teeth were chattering. I pulled him close in a hug.

‘What d’you expect; this is England, isn’t it? Fun though.’ The waves hurled and splashed. I shuddered but kept my smile fixed, for Peter’s sake.

‘Yeah, look.’ He pointed out to sea and I made out the surfers, riding waves. ‘I want to do that.’

‘When you’re a bit bigger you can.’

‘You too, Aud?’

‘Sure.’

Peter looked at me as if I had all the answers. But there was so much I couldn’t help with, so many things I wouldn’t be there for. Unless. I searched the sky for the staircase again, the route out and away. Too late. I’d missed the ride.

‘Are you getting better?’ he asked, and I nodded.

‘Yeah, Pete. I’m fine. Don’t worry.’

Peter didn’t answer, just huddled beside me, dripping on to the blanket. I breathed in the smell of the sea on his hair, towelled it dry and smiled at the roses that were returning to his cheeks.

‘Are you sure? How do you know?’ Peter asked, and I didn’t want to lie again; for too long lies had been safer than the truth – like caves to hide in when there was a storm coming or a mist crouching over the fens. The lie had always been that we were safe. That we would grow up like other kids, grow straight and tall and live good lives. And we’d stayed inside that lie long enough for us to forget that when it put out its arms and held us we stayed
forever cold. The lie for my brother was on the tip of my tongue – another pebble of betrayal I was ready to drop at his feet. I tried to stop it but it spilled of its own accord.

‘You know, Pete, you don’t need to worry. I’m here. I always will be.’

‘Don’t leave, will you, Aud? Don’t leave me again?’

I swallowed; I hadn’t wanted to know that he worried about it, was still afraid.

‘No way, dude,’ I said, talking over the pain in my throat.

‘Why isn’t our mum like other people’s mums?’ His big brown eyes gazed up at me, lashes still sparkling with water. I smudged away the dried salt from his cheek.

‘What d’you mean?’

‘You know.’ He pushed my hand away, wanting answers.

‘Yeah, I do.’ He’d never voiced this before and I realized all the things he’d been hiding, wondered what else was bottled up, and searched for the right words. The ones that would make him feel loved and important and secure. Dad had taught them to me, so long ago that I’d almost forgotten, so I made up my own and hoped for the best. It came from the heart and that had to be right.

‘I don’t know why she is why she is. But she loves us, Pete. And we love her, don’t we?’

He shrugged.

‘We do. She’s our mum. And no one’s life is easy or simple all the time. The main thing you have to know is that, whatever Mum says or does, you’re a special person, Peter. In fact you’re more than special – you’re incredible.
Seriously, the best brother in the whole wide world. When you were born it was the happiest day of my life.’ He pulled an embarrassed face; he was growing up, I realized, and beginning to understand the things I’d thought I could hide. But at least his smile was real. ‘I mean it. And I always want you to remember that, all right? You are precious and perfect. Don’t ever let anyone hurt you. Don’t ever be afraid to shout for help if you need it.’

He stared at me, eyes wide, and I hugged him again.

‘Don’t worry. No one will hurt you. But just in case. If it happens, then you run. You run and you shout and you don’t stop shouting until someone helps.’

‘OK,’ he whispered. There was a long pause, with just the crash and rush of the waves to disturb us; that and the cries of gulls, the odd rumble of passing traffic back on the road.

‘Is that what you were doing, when you went to Leo’s?’ he asked, and it was a while before I could answer.

‘Sort of, mate.’

‘Mum said you didn’t love me any more.’

‘That wasn’t true.’

‘You did love me, because you came back.’

‘Right.’

‘But why did you come back?’ He frowned. ‘Didn’t it work? Running away?’

‘It did. It did. But I had to come back, didn’t I? I missed you too much to stay away.’ It was impossible to explain, to make this make sense, but I had to try. ‘But you, you’re different. Everything will be different for you. I did get away – you saw that – it can be done. If you need to go,
just go. Right? Swear? To a teacher, to Leo or Sue. People you trust, OK?’

‘But I trust you, Aud.’

‘I know. But you’ve got to promise me.’

‘I swear,’ Peter whispered, and we caught each other’s little fingers, making a pact. I breathed out and then we couldn’t talk any more because Mum came sliding down the sand with three cones, dripping vanilla and strawberry sauce, flakes like little leaning towers.

‘Here we are – quick, lick before it’s all down my arms.’ She laughed and Peter jumped up and grabbed our cones, devouring his, passing me mine, as if we’d only been talking about the weather.

After they’d eaten the ice cream and finished off mine, Mum pushed me along the pier for a while in my chair. The last of the sun felt like a hug and I shut my eyes and let it seep into my skin. Under the blanket it was warm. I felt like sleeping. The day had worn me out.

‘Aud, let me push you,’ said Peter, jerking me awake, and he grabbed the handles from Mum. At first he walked, veering from side to side, getting the feel of it, but soon he began to pick up speed, moving faster and faster. I held on, laughing, as he weaved the chair through the other pedestrians, shouting, ‘Beep beep, beep beep!’ We rampaged down the pier, and we didn’t listen to Mum calling, ‘Stop, wait, hang on.’ She’d never catch us – she ran like a geriatric hippo – and I let him push me as fast as he could, facing forward into a breeze that caught my clothes and filled them like sails. We were almost flying. ‘Faster,’ I shouted. ‘Go on!’ And with one last spurt I’m sure we
took off for a second; just for a moment we were airborne, my brother and I, finding our wings, treading the clouds, climbing high towards heaven.